[Congressional Record: May 12, 2011 (Senate)]
[Page S2897-S2900]
USE OF TORTURE
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, the successful end of the 10-year manhunt
to bring Osama bin Laden to justice has appropriately heightened the
Nation's appreciation for the diligence, patriotism, and courage of our
Armed Forces and our intelligence community. They are a great credit
and inspiration to the country that has asked so much of them and, like
all Americans, I am in their debt.
But their success has also reignited debate over whether the so-
called enhanced interrogation techniques of enemy prisoners, including
waterboarding, were instrumental in locating bin Laden and whether they
are necessary and justifiable means for securing valuable information
that might help prevent future terrorist attacks against us and our
allies and lead to the capture or killing of those who would perpetrate
them. Or are they, and should they be, prohibited by our conscience and
laws as torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
I believe some of these practices--especially waterboarding, which is
a mock execution, and thus to me indisputably torture--are and should
be prohibited in a nation that is exceptional in its defense and
advocacy of human rights. I believe they are a violation of the
Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the Military Commissions Act of 2006,
and Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions, all of which forbid
cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of all captured combatants,
whether they wear the uniform of a country or are essentially
stateless.
I opposed waterboarding and similar so-called enhanced interrogation
techniques before Osama bin Laden was brought to justice, and I oppose
them now. I do not believe they are necessary to our success in our war
against terrorists, as the advocates of these techniques claim they
are.
Even more importantly, I believe that if America uses torture, it
could someday result in the torture of American combatants. Yes, I know
al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations do not share our scruples
about the treatment of enemy combatants, and have and will continue to
subject American soldiers and anyone they capture to the cruelest
mistreatment imaginable. But we must bear in mind the likelihood that
someday we will be involved in a more conventional war against a state
and not a terrorist movement or insurgency and be careful that we do
not set a standard that another country could use to justify their
mistreatment of our prisoners.
Lastly, it is difficult to overstate the damage that any practice of
torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment by Americans does to
our national character and historical reputation--to our standing as an
exceptional nation among the countries of the world. It is too grave to
justify the use of these interrogation techniques. America has made its
progress in the world not only by avidly pursuing our geopolitical
interests, but by persuading and inspiring other nations to embrace the
political values that distinguish us. As I have said many times before,
and still maintain, this is not about the terrorists. It is about us.
I understand the reasons that govern the decision to approve these
interrogation methods, and I know those who approved them and those who
employed them in the interrogation of captured terrorists were
admirably dedicated to protecting the American people from harm. I know
they were determined to keep faith with the victims of terrorism and to
prove to our enemies that the United States would pursue justice
tirelessly, relentlessly, and successfully, no matter how long it took.
I know their responsibilities were grave and urgent, and the strain of
their duty was considerable. I admire their dedication and love of
country. But I dispute that it was right to use these methods, which I
do not believe were in the best interests of justice or our security or
the ideals that define us and which we have sacrificed much to defend.
I do not believe anyone should be prosecuted for having used these
techniques in the past, and I agree that the administration should
state definitively that no one will be. As one of the authors of the
Military Commissions Act, which I believe prohibits waterboarding and
other ``enhanced interrogation techniques,'' we wrote into the language
of the law that no one who used them before the enactment of the law
should be prosecuted. I do not think it is helpful or wise to revisit
that policy.
Many advocates of these techniques have asserted their use on
terrorists in our custody, particularly Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
revealed the trail to bin Laden--a trail which had gone cold in recent
years but would now lead to his destruction. The former Attorney
General of the United States, Michael Mukasey, recently claimed that
``the intelligence that led to bin Laden . . . began with a disclosure
from
[[Page S2898]]
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who broke like a dam under the pressure of
harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a
torrent of information--including eventually the nickname of a trusted
courier of bin Laden.'' That is false.
With so much misinformation being fed into such an essential public
debate as this one, I asked the Director of Central Intelligence, Leon
Panetta, for the facts, and I received the following information:
The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. We did not first learn
from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the real name of bin Laden's courier, or
his alias, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti--the man who ultimately enabled us to
find bin Laden. The first mention of the name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, as
well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaida, came
from a detainee held in another country. The United States did not
conduct this detainee's interrogation, nor did we render him to that
country for the purpose of interrogation. We did not learn Abu Ahmed's
real name or alias as a result of waterboarding or any ``enhanced
interrogation technique'' used on a detainee in U.S. custody. None of
the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed's real
name, his whereabouts, or an accurate description of his role in al-
Qaida.
In fact, not only did the use of ``enhanced interrogation
techniques'' on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on
bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed, it actually produced false and
misleading information. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed specifically told his
interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married, and
ceased his role as an al-Qaida facilitator--which was not true, as we
now know. All we learned about Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti through the use of
waterboarding and other ``enhanced interrogation techniques'' against
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the confirmation of the already known fact
that the courier existed and used an alias.
I have sought further information from the staff of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, and they confirmed for me that, in fact, the
best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee--information describing
Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti's real role in al-Qaida and his true relationship
to Osama bin Laden--was obtained through standard, noncoercive means,
not through any ``enhanced interrogation technique.''
In short, it was not torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading
treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately
enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden. I hope
former Attorney General Mukasey will correct his misstatement. It is
important that he do so because we are again engaged in this important
debate, with much at stake for America's security and reputation. Each
side should make its own case but do so without making up its own
facts.
For my part, I would oppose any legislation, if any should be
proposed, that is intended to authorize the administration to return to
the use of waterboarding or other methods of interrogation that I
sincerely believe are torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading, and as
such unworthy of and injurious to our country. This debate is ongoing,
but I do not believe it will lead to a change in current policy
prohibiting these methods.
Perhaps this is a debate for the history books. But it is still
important because Americans in a future age, as well as their leaders,
might face these same questions. We should do our best to provide them
a record of our debates and decisions that is notable not just for its
passion but for its deliberativeness and for opinions that were formed
by facts, and formed with scrupulous care by both sides for the
security of the American people and the success of the ideals we
cherish. We have a duty to leave future American generations with a
history that will offer them not confusion but instruction as they face
their crises and challenges and try to lead America safely and
honorably through them. Both sides cannot be right, of course, but both
sides can be honest, diligent, and sincere.
Let me briefly elaborate my reasons for opposing the return to these
interrogation policies.
Obviously, to defeat our enemies we need intelligence, but
intelligence that is reliable. We should not torture or treat
inhumanely terrorists we have captured. I believe the abuse of
prisoners harms, not helps, our war effort. In my personal experience,
the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often
produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say
anything he thinks his captors want to hear--whether it is true or
false--if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information
provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading, and what the
advocates of cruel and harsh interrogation techniques can never prove
is that we could not have gathered the same intelligence through other
more humane means--as a review of the facts provides solid reason to be
confident that we can. The costs of assuming otherwise can be hugely
detrimental.
It has been reported, and the staff of the Senate Intelligence
Committee confirms for me, that a man named Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi had
been captured by the United States and rendered to Egypt where we
believe he was tortured and provided false and misleading information
about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program. That false
information was ultimately included in Secretary of State Colin
Powell's statement to the U.N. Security Council and, I assume, helped
influence the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq.
Furthermore, I think it is supremely unfair to the men and women in
our intelligence community and military who labored for a decade to
locate Osama bin Laden to claim falsely that they only succeeded
because we used torture to extract actionable intelligence from a few
detainees several years ago. I have not found evidence to suggest that
torture--or since so much of our disagreement is definitional,
interrogation methods that I believe are torture and which I believe
are prohibited by U.S. law and international treaty obligations we are
not just a party to but leading advocates of--played an important part
in finding and killing bin Laden. Rather, I think his death at the
hands of the United States argues quite the contrary, that we can
succeed without resort to these methods.
It is also the case that the mistreatment of enemy prisoners
endangers our own troops who might someday be held captive. While some
enemies, and al-Qaida surely, will never be bound by the principle of
reciprocity, we should have concern for those Americans captured by
more conventional enemies if not in this war then in the next. Until
about 1970, North Vietnam ignored its obligations not to mistreat the
Americans they held prisoner, claiming that we were engaged in an
unlawful war against them and thus not entitled to the protections of
the Geneva Conventions. But when their abuses became widely known and
incited unfavorable international attention, they subsequently
decreased their mistreatment of our POWs.
Some have argued if it is right to kill bin Laden, then it should
also be right to torture him had he been captured rather than killed. I
disagree. First, the Americans who killed bin Laden were on a military
mission against the leader of a terrorist organization with which we
are at war. It was not a law enforcement operation or primarily an
intelligence operation. They could not be certain that bin Laden, even
though he was unarmed, did not possess some means of harming them--a
suicide vest, for instance--and they were correctly instructed to take
no unnecessary chances in the completion of their mission.
Second, bin Laden was a mass murderer. Had we captured him, he would
have eventually received the ultimate sanction for his terrible crimes,
as captured war criminals in previous wars have. But war criminals
captured, tried, and executed in World War II, for instance, were not
tortured in advance of their execution, either in retaliation for their
crimes or to elicit information that might have helped us locate,
apprehend, and convict other war criminals. This was not done because
civilized nations have long made a distinction between killing and
injuring in the heat of combat, on the one hand, and the deliberate
infliction of physical torture on an incapacitated fighter on the
other.
This distinction is recognized not only in longstanding American
values
[[Page S2899]]
and practices but also in the Geneva Conventions that provide legal
protections for our own fighting men and women.
All of these arguments have the force of right but, ultimately, even
they are beside the most important point. There are many arguments to
be made against torture on practical grounds. As I have said, I believe
torture produces unreliable information, hinders our fight against
global terrorism, and harms our national interest and reputation. But,
ultimately, this debate is about far more than technical or practical
issues. It is about far more than whether torture works or does not
work. It is about far more than utilitarian matters.
Ultimately, this is about morality. What is at stake is the very idea
of America--the America whose values have inspired the world and
instilled in the hearts of its citizens the certainty that no matter
how hard we fight, no matter how dangerous our adversary, in the course
of vanquishing our enemies, we do not compromise our deepest values. We
are America, and we hold our ourselves to a higher standard. That is
what is at stake.
Although Osama bin Laden is dead, America remains at war, and to
prevail in this war we need more than victories on the battlefield.
This is a war of ideas as well, a struggle to advance freedom in the
face of terror in places where oppressive rule has bred the malevolence
that feeds the ideology of violent extremism. Prisoner abuses exact a
terrible toll on us in this war of ideas. They inevitably become
public, and when they do they threaten our moral standard and expose us
to false but widely disseminated charges that democracies are no more
inherently idealistic and moral than other regimes.
I understand that Islamic extremists who resort to terror would
destroy us utterly if they could obtain the weapons to do so. But to
defeat them utterly, we must also prevail in our defense of the
universal values that ultimately have the greatest power to eradicate
this evil ideology.
Although it took a decade to find him, there is one consolation for
bin Laden's 10-year evasion of justice. He lived long enough to see
what some are calling the Arab spring, the complete repudiation of bin
Laden's world view and the cruel disregard for human life and human
dignity he used to advance it. In Egypt and Tunisia, Arabs successfully
reclaimed their rights from autocracies to determine their own destiny
without resort to violence or the deliberate destruction of innocent
life. Now Arabs are trying valiantly, by means as just as their cause,
to do the same in Syria and elsewhere.
As the United States discusses and debates what role we should play
to influence the course of the Arab spring, can we not all agree that
the first and most obvious thing we can do is stand as an example of a
just government and equal justice under the law, as a champion of the
idea that an individual's human rights are superior to the will of the
majority or the wishes of the government?
Individuals might forfeit their life and liberty as punishment for
breaking laws, but even then, as recognized in our Constitution's
prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, they are still entitled to
respect for their basic human dignity, even if they have denied that
respect to others.
I do not mourn the loss of any terrorist's life, nor do I care if in
the course of serving their malevolent cause they suffer great harm.
They have earned their terrible punishment in this life and the next.
What I do mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official
neglect we allow, confuse, or encourage those who fight this war for us
to forget that best sense of ourselves, that which is our greatest
strength; that when we fight to defend our security, we also fight for
an idea, not a tribe, not a land, not a king, not a twisted
interpretation of an ancient religion, but for an idea that all men are
endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.
It is indispensable to our success in this war that those we ask to
fight it know that in the discharge of their dangerous responsibilities
to our country, they are never expected to forget they are Americans
and the valiant defenders of a sacred idea of how nations should be
governed and conduct their relations with others--even our enemies.
Those of us who have given them this onerous duty are obliged by our
history and the many terrible sacrifices that have been made in our
defense to make clear to them that they need not risk our country's
honor to prevail, that they are always--through the violence, chaos,
and heartache of war, through deprivation, cruelty and loss they are
always Americans, and different, stronger, and better than those who
would destroy us.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). The majority leader
is recognized.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, in 1982, I was elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives. I was elected along with the now-senior Senator from
the State of Arizona, John McCain. We were both part of that class of
1982.
I have given a lot of speeches on this Senate floor. So has my friend
from Arizona and so have all of us. Frankly, most of the speeches we
give may have a little bite for a day or two. But the speech just given
by my friend, the senior Senator from Arizona, will be forever
remembered in our country and in this body.
Senator McCain and I have had our differences over the years. That
does not take away from the fact that we are friends. We love
prizefighting, and we love our States that are neighbors, Arizona and
Nevada. He has an admirable record representing his party and running
for the Presidency of the United States and chairman of a number of
committees during his tenure in the Senate. We came to the Senate
together, in addition to the House of Representatives.
I want the record to reflect my admiration and respect--as I believe
the whole Senate's respect--for the speech given by this fine man from
Arizona. No one in the Senate--no one, without any qualification--could
have given the speech that was given today. Why? Because he speaks with
knowledge--personal knowledge--that I am sure he still remembers in
those dark nights when he is trying to rest about his having been
tortured. Here is a man who, after having been tortured brutally,
solitary confinement for not a week, not a month but years, was given
permission by the North Vietnamese to go home: We will let you go home.
He said: I am not going home unless I go home with my colleagues who
are in prison with me. Think about that--that concentration camp,
basically.
I wish I had the ability to express in words my admiration for what
he has just said because the things we do when it comes to our evil
enemy, to say that all holds are barred does not work. The easy thing
to do would be to say we should treat them as poorly as they treat us.
But it takes a resume and courage to stand and speak as my friend from
Arizona did today.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, may I thank my very honorable friend and
adversary for his kind remarks. I will always remember them. I thank
him.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I will end my remarks today by reading three
paragraphs from an op-ed that is running all over the country today, in
newspapers all over America, an op-ed written by Senator John McCain:
As we debate how the United States can best influence the
course of the Arab Spring, can't we all agree that the most
obvious thing we can do is stand as an example of a nation
that holds an individual's human rights as superior to the
will of the majority or the wishes of government? Individuals
might forfeit their life as punishment for breaking laws, but
even then, as recognized in our Constitution's prohibition of
cruel and unusual punishment, they are still entitled to
respect for their basic human dignity, even if they have
denied that respect to others.
All of these arguments have the force of right, but they
are beside the most important point. Ultimately, this is more
than a utilitarian debate. This is a moral debate. It is
about who we are.
I don't mourn the loss of any terrorist's life. What I do
mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official
neglect we confuse or encourage those who fight this war for
us to forget the best sense of ourselves.
Through the violence, chaos and heartache of war, through
deprivation and cruelty and loss, we are always Americans,
and different, stronger and better than those who would
destroy us.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I will speak in morning business. Before I
do
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that, I wish to associate myself with the remarks of the Senator from
Nevada in paying tribute to the Senator from Arizona. Senator McCain's
words were both eloquent and profound, and they reflect not only his
strong beliefs but his own personal experience and also reflect
something else that has been consistent in everything he has done in
the Senate; that is, his respect and deep regard for the men and women
of the military services. His reflections today remind us of what they
have done and of the high standards of conduct they expect of
themselves and that we have to recognize also. Again, I join Senator
Reid in saluting Senator McCain for his words but, as he does so many
times, for also being the conscience of the Senate on so many important
topics.
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